The new homes for the winged creatures of Preston Park
BUTLER TWP — Keen-eyed visitors of Preston Park’s trails may have noticed a change in the park’s scenery; the bird boxes have recently been upgraded.
Russ Cawthorne, CEO of Specialty Outdoors, and his good friend, Doug Benninger, have been doing work at the park setting up and monitoring Wood Duck boxes for 10 years.
The two are experienced with housing birds of all kinds, and, in the winter of 2025, they sent a proposal to the Friends of Preston Park Foundation offering to renovate the park’s many bird boxes.
Their proposal was accepted and the two of them got to work replacing all the old bird boxes with new ones that Cawthorne designed. The new design features a piece of PVC pipe that acts as a guard, preventing predators from climbing into the boxes and keeping eggs inside them safe. Cawthorne said the design makes it much easier for him to monitor the nests inside and maintain the boxes.
Now, every bird box in the park has been renovated to this new design and there are a few new boxes set up. And the birds have been loving them. Preston Park now has 33 small bird boxes, and Cawthorne said he has seen birds nesting in more than half of them.
Bluebirds, wrens and chickadees have made these new boxes their homes. Some of them still have baby birds inside, almost ready to leave the nest.
The small birds aren’t the only ones getting new homes in Preston Park.
“Wood ducks are considered by many to be the most elegant of North American waterfowl,” Cawthorne said.
Cawthorne, who specializes in wood ducks, set up and refurbished four their boxes around the park. Those boxes also have a smaller bird box on top of them, which discourages smaller birds from nesting in the duck box.
Wood ducks like their nests near water, so the four boxes are set up close to the ponds in the park, and they have been a huge success.
Three out of four boxes were nested in by wood ducks, two of which had successful hatches, one with 10 eggs and the other with 12. Wood ducks might become one among many birds visitors see more commonly around the park now. If you’re lucky enough, you may even get to see a parent duck coaxing their young out of the nest when they’re ready.
While renovating the bird boxes, Cawthorne and Benninger discovered a “hidden gem” in Preston Park; there is a small population of flying squirrels living there. Cawthorne discovered the squirrels using some of the old bird boxes as nesting and resting sites.
Flying squirrels love nesting in old trees with holes, but pine and deciduous trees are the most common tree species in the park which are not ideal nesting trees for the squirrels. Removing these old boxes would have meant kicking the flying squirrels out of the park — a population that Cawthorne didn’t want to evict. To get them to stay, he is testing a larger box to see if they will move into there instead.
If the box is a success, more could be set up to try and help the squirrels’ population and create nice spots for them to live. Flying squirrels are found throughout the state, but they are nocturnal animals, so don’t expect to see many during a daytime walk through the park.
And despite their name, flying squirrels don’t actually fly, but rather glide up to 60 feet, using their tails to steer through the air. Cawthorne says that these little guys are a wonderful addition to the park’s wildlife.
The final stage of Cawthorne’s renovations is all about an old addition to the park that has long been dormant, the bat boxes. They have been non-functional for decades due to lack of maintenance, but he wants to change that.
Bats are native animals that are important to the park’s ecosystem. They prey on a huge variety of insects, keeping their population from spiraling out of control. Cawthorne said that bees and wasps have long since been living in the old bat boxes, so both bat boxes in the park would need to be taken down and fully cleaned out or repaired. These boxes sit high up, so monitoring them regularly would be difficult, he said.
To solve this issue, he proposed a pulley system could be added to quickly and safely lower the boxes enough to be easily monitored. There are currently two inactive bat boxes in the park, but someday soon, they could act as a luxury home to dozens of bats.
In just a few months, Cawthorne and Benninger have made a big impact on the wildlife of Preston Park — additions that will continue to draw in new creatures looking to make the park their home.
“A few of the boxes will need to be moved to better, safer locations, but this is a great start,” Cawthorne said.
